Re: The Problem With Keeping It Plain And Simple?

[Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Tony Markos noted: 

Good technical writing is so
simple and straight forward, they will wonder what
took you so long.

Geoff Hart responded:

Not necessarily..... 

Tony Markos:

I noticed that the last part of your e-mail address is
"ca" (sorry, I forget what technically the last part
of an e-mail address is called).  If it stands for
California, then I think I know where your comming
from.  It has been my experience that in the more
ledging-edge parts of the country, "Not necessarily"
is more common than in lets say Cleveland.  That said,
there are many more Clevelands than Silicon valleys
(or Sorrento valleys, or Austin Texases)

Geoff:

Your article on metrics is very informative 
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/resources/2004/metrics.htm)

In it you state:

"The classic example of a metric that targets the
wrong problem is the one that specifies writing a
minimum number of pages per hour. We all know that
it?s easier to explain even a simple concept in 20
words than in 10, so that metric will have the
unintended consequence of longer documents.
Unfortunately, that's not what our managers and our
clients really need."

My opinion:

You state that we all know that it is easier to
explain a simple concept in 20 words than in 10, yet,
on the other hand, it has been my expereince that 
performance measurement based on a pages-per-hour
rules (I attended a STC special meeting on estimating
where a pages-per-hour focus was firm gospel).  If all
of this is true, it does not say alot in the positive
about the capacity for human beings to be honest.

Tony Markos


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